The F15 Eagle: The Greatest Fighter Jet of All Time

the year 1968. the USSR has just unveiled their brand new top of the line fighter jet the mig-25 capable of higher altitudes higher speeds vastly more maneuverable than just generally more liked by its Pilots when compared to its American counterpart the F4 Phantom which you find out about in its whole lone Mega projects video after you've watched this one of course it has the US Air Force shaking in their boots the main matter is worse the US has been bogged down in the Vietnam War for nearly 10 years losing over 200 f4s in that time and going on to lose another 300 before it would be done the US needed a hero and in late 1972 that hero would come a fighter jet so successful that not only has one never been lost to an aerial combatant but it's still in service over 50 years from first flying the focus of today's Mega projects video is of course the McDonald Douglas F-15 Eagle the greatest fighter jet of all time [Music] [Music] the story of the F-15 begins like all things in the Deep depths of America bureaucracy then defense secretary Robert McNamara I was desperately looking for ways to cut back the costs of the bloated U.S military the public had begun to turn against the Vietnam War and as such the blank check budget could no longer be supported this ultimately led to its Fable decision in 1965 that the U.S Air Force and navy would be pushed to adopt a single standardized jet for fighter missions another for bombing missions and a third for surveillance aimed primarily at cutting costs this decision has been credited as leading to the development of the f11 aardvark long-range interdiction fighter and the F4 Phantom Strike Fighter each although capable jets would receive a large matter of criticism in their own right the f11 criticized for lacking sufficient capacity to carry heavy loads in the F4 being criticized for being too slow and hard to maneuver particularly at low altitudes such as the altitudes where most dog fire in Vietnam actually occurred this ultimately led to the U.S DOD publishing a call for designs in 1968. this call required that any design to be capable of Mac 2.5 to be easily maneuverable at all altitudes and to burn less fuel than any previous jet that have been used by the US well this call coming just weeks after the mig-25's unveiling was a clear attempt by the U.S of military one-upmanship one that they would handle a liberon the Department of Defense would receive four designs one each from General Dynamics Fairchild Republic North American Rockwell and McDonald Atlas ultimately it was decided that the best aircraft to improve on the floors of the F4 would be the one designed by the Air Force Creator and as such in June 1969 McDonnell Douglas was granted the contract and the F-15 was born yeah there are seven primary variants of the F-15 the a b c d e 2 and X the OB models were the very first models introduced in July of 1972 and 1973 respectively the only notable difference between the two Jets being that a was a single-seater and b a dual seater this design decision was specifically so that the B could compete better with the F4 a major selling point of which was that it was one of the first ever Jets to beat dual Cedar by Design which allowed One Pilot to focus on actually flying the Jet and a second to focus on target acquisition and communicating with Air Command a second clear advantage that the A and B had over their competitors was the inclusion of groundbreaking shoot down radar this module had been specifically designed by McDonnell Douglas to overcome the key issue that had been faced by U.S fighter jets in Vietnam in Vietnam many F4 Pilots often had to resort to minigun kills due to acclaimed inability of their Jets to actually secure radar locks on enemy migs this primarily arose due to the migs 10 to fly at exceedingly low altitude barely above the Treetops and as a result the trees would interfere with the previous radar far too much McDonald Douglas claimed that their brand new radar had completely overcome the issue faced by the F4 and that it should be fully capable of securing a lock at low altitude I'll prove of this claim being supplied McDonnell was immediately greeted with an order for over 500 f-15a and bees for immediate use although the Vietnam War would end in 1975 meaning that only a very small number of the early aircraft would actually see combat in this theater this early success did not stymie development at McDonald Douglas though only a few years later in 1978 the first major Improvement would be made to the F-15 range with the release of the f-15c and D these aircraft would go on to be the most mass-produced version of the F-15 and although not still in service in the U.S Air Force they are still one of the most widely used Jets of all time like their predecessors the C and D's only difference with one another is that the sea is a single seater and the D is a dual seater the new model did present four major improvements over the previous generation though firstly the new aircraft could carry a drastically higher amount of fuel both internally and externally this allowed for not just longer range missions but crucially it allowed for longer times in the air yet another complaint that had been raised in Vietnam War was that f4s had a small fuel tank lizard often meant that as soon as an F4 Was Heard overhead any Vietcong Fighters would simply lay low and just wait it out this was no longer a possibility with the F-15 the second major advantage of the new aircraft was the equally drastic increase in maximum flight weight the new models could carry up to 61 000 pounds takeoff compared with the A and B's capacity of only 40 000 pounds this enabled not just an even greater increase for fuel capacity but a vast increase in the number of armaments that the new Jets could carry now being capable of carrying up to 16 different air-to-air missiles at a time as well as carrying a single 20 millimeter m61a1 Vulcan rotary cannon in the nose the third major advantage of the C and D always that Not only was it capable of carrying more missiles but it could carry better missiles the f-15s onboard Central Computer came with built-in support for the brand new aim 7 sparrow and A9 Sidewinder at OEM missiles and the brand new long-range aim 120 amram fire and forget air-to-air missile this final missile was capable of not just engaging targets beyond the line of sight of the pilot but even capable of maintaining a lock even if the F-15 had lost it this was a revolutionary weapon and made the F-15 CMD the most advanced fighter jets of their time the final major improvement over the A and B O is the inclusion of the world's first programmable signal processor or PSP radar this radar allowed the pilot or co-pilot in an f-15d to reprogram the radar mid-flight this could prove particularly useful if the jet needed to be re-tasked and due with ground targets or helicopters or if the jet that the F-15 was engaging with was deploying countermeasures in which case the PSP could even be used to overcome them ultimately PSP radar would revolutionize the development of fighter jets and would bring the F-15 one step closer to replacing the F4 as a multi-purpose Strike Fighter ultimately the final nail in the Air Force golf inward come in 1982 with the release of the f-15e the E had been produced as part of a new call for specification issued by the Department of Defense aimed at providing both the Air Force and the Navy with a single Strike Fighter capable of engaging both enemy air targets and ground targets it had been specifically designed to be capable of supporting both a ground-focused and air focused radar making it a true jackable trade the combination of its PSP radar dual seater array and a radar that was particularly skilled to differentiating between enemies and ground interference made it perfectly suited for this role the key difference between the E and earlier models was further refined with its fuel tank and trimming off some extra weight this enabled the E to have a slightly lower weight than its predecessors while crucially not cutting down drastically on either viable flight times or effective combat range the second major difference of the e was that alongside the air-to-air missiles the CND supported it also supported an array of outer surface missiles as well as both guided and unguided bombs including nuclear Munitions the ultimately revolutionized the role of the F-15 no longer did strike Fighters need to sacrifice their speed for Effective ground support not only that but the e-introduced challenge for opponents of the USA if and he was spotted on radar there was no way of knowing whether it was prepped for air-to-air or air to ground or a mixed load this lack of predictability has been cited by many military planners as a key reason only e being such an effective Jet and one of the reasons that it is the last of the classic fft models to still be employed by the US military the E would be the last upgrade to the F-15 line for just over 30 years until in 2013 Boeing who now owns McDonnell Douglas announced a new upgrade program for the entire fleet of cnds that upgrade being termed the F-15 tubes this new upgrade was primarily aimed to fill a hole left in the athletes by the delay of the new f-22s which you can learn also more about in their entire own Mega projects video no nothing detailed is really known about the f-152s at least nothing for sure what we do know is that they are faster have a longer range and can carry more advanced weapons than their predecessors the two is not the only new F-15 though in 2021 a whopping 50 years after the first test flight of an F-15 Boeing would announce the f-15ex Zex is just as secretive as the twos about its exact details but it has been rumored to be capable of nearly three times the speed of sound which would make it Far and Away the single fastest fighter jet in the world it's also known that the price of these new Jets is about 150 million dollars despite going 50 years in the front seat Boeing has shown no signs of slowing it's rumored that even more variants of the F-15 will be announced over the coming years and in recent press releases they've even claimed that the F-15 will be kept as an airworthy fighter jet until the mid-2050s which would make the F-15 90. if it really does reach that aim the first F-15 delivered to the U.S Air Force was an f-15b delivered on the 13th of November 1974. the first combat deployment would come in January 1976 as part of The 555th Fighter Squadron and it has seen serviced in seven countries notably the F-15 is one of the few U.S Fighters not operated by the United Kingdom thanks to the fact that it directly competes with the UK's own neurofighter typhoon the first Kilt ever scored by the F-15 would be against a Jordanian mig-25 in 1979 in the arab-israeli conflict Israeli combat Ace bogemale scored the kill in fact the Israeli Air Force would go on to shoot down more jets with the F-15 than all the other countries combined shooting down over 60 different Jets without suffering a single loss then from 1984 to 1988 the U.S Air Force wondered what they could do with their most versatile Jets who wish they had the response that all of us would have with our multi-million dollar Jet Machine let's take it to space the F-15 would become the aircraft of choice for the Assad programmer program designed specifically to counter Soviets by satellites as part of the program U.S Pilots would fly to the uppermost edges of the atmosphere equipped with experimental aim 135 long range air-to-air missiles once there they would see whether they could engage a radar lock with a satellite in low earth orbit and then attempt to shoot it down for the most part this program was complete failure the missiles rarely managed to hit their target and the entire program was causing quite a political mess due to the various treaties prohibiting the militarization about a space despite asshat canning in 1988 it would be an f-15a piloted by Major Doug Pearson which would become the only jet in human history to ever shoot down a satellite successfully from there the next deployment of the F-15 would be as part of Operation Desert Shield and then a later in the subsequent Operation Desert Storm operated by both the United States and Saudi Arabia in the conflict the F-15 would be deployed for two primary duties firstly it would be tasked with establishing air superiority over the region something it had been widely credited with achieving having scored 36 of the 39 air victories scored by the U.S in that conflict secondly it would be tasked in conjunction with ground spotting teams from the British SAS with destroying the deadly scud missiles which were scattered across the Iraqi desert in this it also proved deadly efficient as its ultimate Testament across the entire Gulf War only two 15s would be lost both to ground fire the final major engagement of the late 20th century would come in 1999 with operation Allied Force where NATO deployed its forces to support a no-fly zone which had been declared above the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo in this conflict f-15s would be credited with grounding almost the entire Yugoslav Air Force after the destruction on one day of four of their mig-29s their most advanced Jets there's figures published in 2008 by the U.S Department of Defense f-15s worldwide have been credited with 104 air-to-air kills compared with absolutely zero losses to air Targets this is already impressive but when compared with the F4 which lost over 500 jets in Vietnam alone this really does outline the f 15 as one of the most remarkably efficient Jets of all time [Music] from 2000 to 2010 the US would begin to decommission much of its older f-15c and f-15d fleets replacing them oh with either newly upgraded f-152s or F-22 Fighters where available this has not ended the use of the F-15 worldwide though the jet is still used by both the Israeli Air Force and the Saudi Royal Air Force most notably the Saudis have deployed dozens of f-15s to devastate the Irani Air Force and have used the jet in Yemen as recently as 2021 but there is one conflict that has dominated headlines throughout late 2022 and into 2023. the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine Crossing Ukraine's eastern northern borders while also launching an attack out of occupied crime here immediately before this Advance there was a catastrophic air bombardment of Ukraine primarily by cruise missiles but also by the Limited use of both Russian helicopters and jet aircraft observers at the time of the invasion believed that the war would be short and probably bloody clearly leaning in Russia's favor since then Ukraine has not only managed to hold hold on for a year but they have proven themselves equally capable of striking Russia where it hurts a key part of the war in Ukraine has been the Western assistance of the country by supplying Arts one such arm that Ukraine has frequently requested is the F-15 now the time the writing of this script it was believed by most observers that Ukraine had about the same chance of getting an F-15 as winning the lottery which is to say not very much since that early writing the United States has actually announced that they're going to be sending the top of the line M1 Abrams Tanks to Ukraine something that was also believed to be very unlikely so providing that by the time this video comes out f-15s haven't already been sent it now does seem like a possibility that f-15s may soon be flying in the skies above Ukraine [Music] from Pilots beleaguered by the aging and sluggish F4 to the always grinning face of Tom Cruise and Top Gun to potentially the need in the Ukrainian Air Force the F-15 has been a constant force for Pure military power in the skies of conflict zones for the past 50 years there's no sign it plans to slow down anytime soon and with a record of 104 nil why would they [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

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Keywords: f-15 eagle, f-15 strike eagle, mcdonnell douglas f15 eagle, strike eagle, f15 for sale, f15 tomcat for sale, f15 models, new f15, boeing f-15, mcdonnell douglas, mcdonnell douglas f-15, f-15, f 15, f-15e, f15ex, f-15c

Id: pgI7jDd7hww

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023